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Official portrait of United States House Speaker (R-Ohio). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Early this morning, the U.S. Senate, by a vote of 89 to 9, passed a bill designed to back the nation away from the fiscal cliff—potentially averting a critical challenge to the nation's economic recovery and forestalling a feared negative reaction from the stock markets upon opening Wednesday morning.

While the last minute and intensive negotiations led to success in the upper chamber of Congress, the battle is far from over as it remains to be seen whether the House of Representatives will approve the bi-partisan agreement or, for that matter, whether the bill will be permitted to even come to the House floor for a vote.

The agreement means an increased tax bill for married couples earning more than $450,000—$400,000 for single filers—as the current top rate of 35 percent rises to 39.6 percent. Americans earning at this level will also experience a change in the taxes they pay on dividends and capital gains, with these rates increasing from 15 percent to 20 percent—an amount far less than the 40 percent originally sought by the Administration.

The tax measures have angered both liberals —who strongly believe the President should have held his ground on the promise to apply the increases to those earning in excess of $250,000—and conservatives who object to any tax increase whatsoever with equal fervor.

However, not all taxpayers earning less than $450,000 come away unscathed by the deal as the agreement returns to the Clinton era limits on personal exemptions and itemized deductions for couples earning more than $250,000 $300,000 and single filers earning in excess of $200,000 $250,000,

As for estate taxes, the rates will rise from 35 percent to 40 percent for estates valued at over $5 million dollars, however the Republicans did succeed in building in a provision which allows the amount of the exemption (currently five million dollars) to be indexed to the rate of inflation.

But it isn’t all just about taxes as the Senate bill addresses a number of additional and parallel issues that fed into the fiscal cliff fiasco—including passage of a nine month extension of the farm bill, temporarily removing the threat of a radical rise in the price of milk.

Here’s a roundup—

Unemployment benefits are extended for an additional year benefiting approximately 2 million out of work Americans.

Tax credits for college tuition, created by the 2009 stimulus package, are extended for five year, benefiting some 25 million low income families.

The “doctor fix” is included meaning that Medicare providers will not face a serious cut in pay.

A number of existing business tax benefits will remain in place for another year, including renewable energy tax credit which is extended for an additional year.

The $900 per year salary raise recently signed into existence by President Obama for members of Congress is revoked.

Not included in the agreement is an extension of the payroll cut meaning that payroll taxes will rise by for 2 percent for all American wage earners.

Also not included is a rise in the debt ceiling. The nation actually reached its debt ceiling yesterday and, while the Treasury Department says that it can continue to pay outstanding debt obligations and other bills for another two months, there will need to be an all new debt ceiling battle in Congress beginning in February to allow the nation to continuing making payments on its debt obligations.

Which brings us to the sequester—the harsh cuts to the federal budget scheduled to go into effect today. Per the agreement, the cuts have been delayed for two months, with the obvious intent of taking up these cuts as a part of our next fiscal fiasco —the debt ceiling debates coming in February to a Congress near you.

If you’re into picking the winners and the losers, you’ll find that your choices will be guided by those elements of the deal that strike closest to home.

Conservatives, already unhappy with tax increases, are likely to be further displeased that the Senate agreement fails to actually deal with spending—something Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged yesterday when asking GOP Senators to vote for the bill despite its failure to address spending cuts, noting that the tax portion of the fiscal cliff was the most important component of the deal.